Who was/is Jerry Adams & The Starlighters ? - CDs, Vinyl LPs, DVD and more

Jerry Adams & The Starlighters

Jerry Adams came from Tulsa, Oklahoma, an area that produced Al Sweatt, Johnny Cale, Carl Radle, Clyde Stacy, Chuck Blackwell, Leon Russell and David Gates. "This music wasn't called rock 'n' roll," opined Rodney Lay. "It was called Tulsa Bop."

Adams, who sang with Leon Russell's Starlighters, recorded Old Black Joe at radio WKY in Oklahoma City, and his version was issued on Hugh Whitlow's Tulsa-based WHEEL label in 1960. The songwriting credits were shown as 'Adams-Bridges' but, like The Swanee River made famous in Stephen Foster's Old Folks At Home, it's really another song by the most successful of all pre-Tin Pan Alley songwriters. Jerry Lee Lewis had recorded Old Black Joe only months before, and Russell Bridges aka Leon Russell tackles Lewis's piano swoops with aplomb.

The Starlighters' guitarist, Leo Feathers, was featured on the band's next record, Hot Licks c/w Creepin' (WHEEL 1004).

Jerry Adamses pop up all over the place, but our man may well be the Jerry Adams on UNIVERSE (his revival of Party Doll has that same slightly adenoidal quality), KRASH, GRC and D-SHEL. According to Rodney Lay, who toured the U.K. as Roy Clark's bass player in 1979, Jerry Adams enjoyed a second career as a dee-jay on Tulsa's KAKC. Another informant thinks Adams followed Russell, Gates and Co. to California and that he settled in Bakersfield.

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